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The team that powers VLC (2019)

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Re: The team that powers VLC (2019)

#21

Post by Octplane »

grokx wrote: post #7

A funny story (among many other) related to the traffic cone chosen as the VLC icon. When some student was spotted consuming most of the bandwidth by downloading 'Linux distros' on P2P networks, such traffic cone would be placed in front of his room door, to designate the culprit. It might be one of the reason of the VLC icon choice. Told by my brother in law, who was president of the VIA[0] student association of th…

I had never heard this story but this could definitely have happened at some point.

My personal memory that this happened because the people there were collecting cones at a high rate to play in the corridor of the floor (the 2H) of the student residence most of the VideoLAN / Via people were occupying at that time. This trend was certainly started by someone who became Debian Project Leader at some point and who was also enjoying eating regularly at a fast food restaurant in town. On their way back, these young and stupid boys were stealing the cones from a nearby gas station and bringing them back.

This lead to various uses such as the creation of an unofficial acrobatic cone launch federation (« la federation internationale de cone ball » I tried to find a picture of a now prominent Google SRE in action but my google-fu escaped me) and various costumes[1].

The cone used as an icon was also illustrating the fact that most of the code was heavily in progress at that time and so definitely not usable.

We were young!

1: http://sam.zoy.org/photos/20001011%20-%202H/016%20-%20la%20d...

Re: The team that powers VLC (2019)

#22

Post by kdjfjf7d7 »

jjulius wrote: post #6
kdjfjf7d7 wrote: post #3

I always wonder why people go gaga googoo over VLC, when there's Media Player Classic with K-lite which does a lot of the same things better. I remember watching 1080p blurry rips in MPC without any problems in 2008 while VLC would spend 1 year doing some sort of buffering upon opening then struggling to play the video correctly.

You're arguing that MPC is better than VLC because of an issue you encountered 13 - almost 14 - years ago?

No, I'm pointing out that a better player already existed since the inception of VLC.

Re: The team that powers VLC (2019)

#23

Post by kdjfjf7d7 »

zppln wrote: post #18
kdjfjf7d7 wrote: post #3

I always wonder why people go gaga googoo over VLC, when there's Media Player Classic with K-lite which does a lot of the same things better. I remember watching 1080p blurry rips in MPC without any problems in 2008 while VLC would spend 1 year doing some sort of buffering upon opening then struggling to play the video correctly.

Well, I've personally always wondered why people advocate MPC. During like 15+ years of use I can't recall having a single issue with VLC. And that's from consuming basically everything from the VCD era and onwards. In my experience VLC has been as close to flawless software as one can get.

I dont think VLC is bad by any means or that anyone shouldn't use it, I just don't understand the comments I often see on HN acting like it's some unprecedented software that's unlike anything else.

Re: The team that powers VLC (2019)

#24

Post by twostorytower »

kdjfjf7d7 wrote: post #23
zppln wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I've personally always wondered why people advocate MPC. During like 15+ years of use I can't recall having a single issue with VLC. And that's from consuming basically everything from the VCD era and onwards. In my experience VLC has been as close to flawless software as one can get.

I dont think VLC is bad by any means or that anyone shouldn't use it, I just don't understand the comments I often see on HN acting like it's some unprecedented software that's unlike anything else.

It plays any media file you throw at it out of the box and doesn't require any codec packs installed. On top of that, it has a ton of other features including network support. Simple as that.

Re: The team that powers VLC (2019)

#25

Post by kdjfjf7d7 »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #12
datenarsch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MPC-HC is just as good as VLC and maybe a little less cluttered. It's Windows only of course, but if that isn't a limiting factor, then it's a very good alternative to VLC in my opinion.

From the home page: "MPC-HC is not under development since 2017. Please switch to something else."

The version packaged with K-lite is frequently updated to this day, last release today.

Re: The team that powers VLC (2019)

#28

Post by the_af »

kdjfjf7d7 wrote: post #3

I always wonder why people go gaga googoo over VLC, when there's Media Player Classic with K-lite which does a lot of the same things better. I remember watching 1080p blurry rips in MPC without any problems in 2008 while VLC would spend 1 year doing some sort of buffering upon opening then struggling to play the video correctly.

In my case, because VLC opens and plays flawlessly any video file you throw at it and that other players struggle with. That and it's FOSS and available in every OS I ever used.

What else is there to think about?

Re: The team that powers VLC (2019)

#30

Post by asdf_snar »

kdjfjf7d7 wrote: post #3

I always wonder why people go gaga googoo over VLC, when there's Media Player Classic with K-lite which does a lot of the same things better. I remember watching 1080p blurry rips in MPC without any problems in 2008 while VLC would spend 1 year doing some sort of buffering upon opening then struggling to play the video correctly.

It might come down to difference of experiences. As soon as software bites you once, I think most people feel differently towards it. I think the reason VLC gets (and in my opinion, deserves) a lot of praise is that a large part of the user base has never felt bitten.

Personally, I have never once had trouble getting VLC to run a media file, and I can't say that for any other media player. Granted, I don't know any other media players, and I don't know if it's hard to make a good one -- but that's kind of the point. I want a limited range of features from a media player: ability to make sound really loud, adjust timing of subtitles, speed up / slow down. All of those "just work" for VLC and have very basic navigation (that's good). VLC has allowed me to be comfortably oblivious to all the codec crap I remember dealing with over a decade ago.

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